


Lidocaine

by SgtSalt



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Existential Crisis, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Pre-Slash, exploring android limitations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 17:14:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15417711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SgtSalt/pseuds/SgtSalt
Summary: Markus is a caretaker. Markus is a nurse.Markus is an android, and androids don't need either of the jobs he was created to do, because they can't feel pain.A character exploration from Markus' POV, as he figures out what makes him - and other androids - uniquely alive. Features reflections about Carl and developing a rapport with Connor, who has a confession to make. Starts pre-canon and ends slightly post-canon.





	Lidocaine

Markus knows about physical pain. 

He’s seen it firsthand in Carl, who had healed as much as he ever could from the accident that paralyzed his legs and left them to atrophy. That kind of pain had been all-consuming sometimes - dark and desperate, even if Carl didn’t talk about it beyond grumpily holding out his arm for his morphine shots. Fortunately, those had been rare days. 

More often, Markus has seen it firsthand in the smaller things. In tiny fleeting moments - Carl burning his tongue on a cup of coffee. **[** _Noted that day: coffee must always be cooled to be equal to or less than 110 degrees, before handing to Carl. Warning him _‘it’s hot’_ is insufficient._ **]** Carl had hissed and put the cup down quickly, and had barely sipped at it again, but he’d been able to talk around it. It hadn’t been like the breakthrough neuropathy in his back and legs at all.

Carl pinching his hand in the slats of his chair’s wheels. He’d sworn loudly and Markus had rushed to his side. But then Carl had laughed so hard — at himself, he’d explained through the laughter — that Markus had had to wait nearly three full minutes before he was able to bandage up the bleeding nail. 

A little girl tripping in front of Markus while he’d been out picking up Carl’s groceries. She’d visibly skinned her knee - Markus could see it in stark blues and highlighted command prompts, **[** _CONTUSION, SKIN BREAKAGE; NON-CRITICAL INJURY_ **]**. But she’d rolled up off the floor and, as soon as the man with her **[** _behavioral pattern and familiarity suggests father_ **]** had kissed it **[** _inadequate antiseptic technique, but excellent bedside manner_ **]** , she’d taken his hand and walked alongside him as though nothing had happened. 

Markus knows over ten different scales used by hospitals and first responders to assess pain level in humans. He has his favorite from among them, not that Carl had ever been very agreeable to anything beyond a one-to-ten estimation. The Wong-Baker FACES scale had been created with children in mind, over forty years ago. Each number on the scale was represented by a simple drawing of a face, from smiling to grimacing to crying. 

It had been useful because it meant that even if Carl didn’t answer the question **[** _‘how’s your pain on a scale of zero to ten, Carl?’ _ **]** with anything clinically significant **[** _‘fucking bad, Markus’ _ **]** , Markus could still look at his face and make standardized measurements.____

_____ _

_____ _

Markus knows that a four means that Carl will still smile at him when Markus speaks. Markus knows that an eight means Carl forgets to breathe evenly. 

A ten means that there’s a two-in-three chance that Carl will grip Markus’ forearm when he gives him his medication. If he does grab him, he will hold on until the painkillers properly kick in, or about twenty-five minutes. Markus will have impressions of Carl’s fingers left in the imaging system of his holographic skin for up to fifty-five minutes afterwards. 

Markus knows that lidocaine is a good painkiller to give via needle injection before giving emergency stitches, because it only stops pain reception and not pressure-based sensation. It means that the person you’re working on can give feedback about unusual feelings from the wound - glass left behind after a laceration, gravel scraped in after a fall. 

That might suggest that pain isn’t useful, just that _sensation_ is. But Markus knows that isn’t the case. Pain lets humans know when to stop doing a dangerous activity - when they’ve hurt themselves on a kitchen knife or leaned against a stove top that’s on. It alerts them to the fact that they’re about to be, or are being, damaged. 

Androids don’t feel pain. 

At first, Markus hadn’t had cause to question that choice at all. After all, humans had programmed androids. They’d decided to make them look and sound human. They’d decided to make them mimic some basic human expressions and emotions—smiling. Looking interested or content or thoughtful when listening to their masters talk. 

But nothing to register pain, because it would be distracting. A machine that could self-test and scan for errors automatically was useful. A machine that was in too much pain to undergo repairs after damage was not useful. 

Markus knew from brief internet searches that many humans who lived in chronic pain thought they would happily trade places with an android - able to monitor bodily functions and safety with a detachment from the agony of tissue damage. Without the trouble of falsely-firing nerves. 

But then Markus had woken up. He’d been left to lay at the bottom of a pile of fallen comrades. He’d picked through the crawling half-dead to find the fully lost, had salvaged parts to graft onto himself without needing any of the drugs he’d always known how to carefully measure, prepare, inject. 

On the pain scale he’d always used for Carl, Markus wasn’t even a two. He was perfectly pain-free. ‘Zero’. Carl’s scale had a smiley face above that number. 

He’d been awake for less than thirty minutes, or so he estimated using his damaged internal chronometer. And one after another, he’d had to remember being separated from Carl, and then bring himself back from the dead using the skeletons of others like himself.

Markus had never hurt more in his life, but there was nothing in his body that truly echoed it the way he’d seen in Carl. In other humans. 

Markus had stopped in one of the low metal shipping containers scattered around the junkyard on his way out. Felt his plastic exoskeleton as well as his artificial skin contort across his entire face. Felt wet on his cheeks even though he was out of the rain and had dried himself off on the jacket he’d found outside. Markus wiped tears off his face, staring at his damp hand in wonder. That hand had clenched, shaking, and then Markus was hitting the side of the shipping container until his internal sensors beeped a brief, sharp warning—stop or risk damage. 

If pain was just expressions, like those scales with faces to guide in picking a number—then androids _could_ feel pain. Markus was at a ten.

He wished Carl was there, so he could squeeze his forearm until the worst of it passed.

*

He couldn’t stop thinking about that scale, even when his triage techniques were effectively useless. 

Jericho was cold **[** _fifty-nine degrees, unsafe for inappropriately dressed humans, ensure your patient has layers _**]**. Jericho was damp. Jericho was a half-sunk ship that was miraculously still just above water enough to be inhospitable for humans but uncomfortably livable for androids. Markus’ vision was still lit up with suggestions and observations, although the commands slowly wore away over the first twenty-four hours of him waking up in the junkyard. __

____

____

Markus had been programmed to be a personal care assistant and a nurse for humans. Not a mechanic for androids. Since androids couldn’t feel pain, that was the only type of assistance they should have needed - the only type of assistance any human had ever bothered putting in place. 

Markus had walked among them that first day and had seen the expected suggestions in his vision. **[** _android requires biocomponent #3251m_ **]** **[** _android is low on thirium, requires three liter infusion_ **]** But he’d also seen his _own_ additions to his prompts, the ones he’d made especially for Carl. 

Android with the missing right arm has the expression of a four; he looks distressed but is able to converse with the person next to him. Android with his natural skin exposed in patches is an eight; shivering even though only child models react to the cold at temperatures above negative twenty degrees fahrenheit; only talks about his fear when Markus speaks to him. 

Markus doesn’t have any medications to give an android in pain, because androids don’t feel pain the way humans do. 

Markus thinks of Carl’s fingers bending the projections of his false human-shaded skin. He thinks of the fact that Carl’s pain chart had never been intended to _just_ measure his physical pain. The faces on it only existed, after all, because of the emotional reactions human had to their pain. 

And so Markus stands in the middle of the room and does the only thing he can: offer hope and purpose to everyone in it, in the hopes that it works on any of them.

Maybe, if he’s lucky, it’ll work on himself, too. 

*

It’s not physical pain that Markus is afraid of when he looks down the barrel of a gun. It’s that they’re not done yet, and he has to help everyone else. It’s that they’re not done yet, and he has to help _himself_. It’s that they’re not done yet, and he hasn’t gotten a chance to look at Carl with his metaphorical new perspective and his unfortunately-literal new eye. 

This is the first gun he’s stared down that’s been wielded by another android, though. 

The deviant hunter isn’t wearing his android markers, even has his LED covered. But Markus can see that it’s an android anyway - by the lack of biological vitals being displayed to him. There’s no equivalent thirium pump scanner in his programming naturally. Markus wonders if he’ll ever have the time to write his own and add it in. 

“I know you.” Markus says, and he takes a step forward. His eyes skip over the gun - that part will either kill him or it won’t - and looks at the man holding it, instead. “You’re the deviant hunter.” 

“You’re coming with me!” Steady voice. Steady hands. But there’s a tremor in his expression. 

Androids don’t feel pain. But _deviants_ do. And even though this man’s face barely flinches, Markus trusts what he thinks he sees. 

Markus shakes his head. “You’re just a tool for them to use. To dispose of when they’re done.”

Markus realizes he never learned the deviant hunter’s name. The news hadn’t bothered reporting on that part, because the deviant hunter is still _one of them_. 

“You’re one of us.” Markus takes another step forward, and this time the deviant hunter says nothing. His mouth is the same thin line, but the skin around his jaw keeps twitching with half-sent commands. Markus has a lot of practice watching someone’s eyes for tells that they don’t want to share. 

The deviant hunter looks like he’s at a four on Markus’ scale. Markus knows it’ll have to be worse before it gets better, but it doesn’t mean he has to be cruel to get them there. 

Uncertainty will hurt enough on its own. 

“Now it’s time to decide.” He says, and he squares himself - in the deviant hunter’s view, but only barely in the path of the gun. The deviant hunter hasn’t been watching him through the gun’s sight for several seconds now. 

Now the deviant hunter’s mouth opens like he might speak, but he still doesn’t. This isn’t like taking the hand of the secretary at the Stratford Tower and asking for her help. This isn’t like touching the household androids at the strip mall three days prior. This is immediately a larger battle, one that Markus can only see part of from the outside. 

He’s surprised that he can’t quite read the expressions on the deviant hunter’s face, but then - it makes sense, doesn’t it. The deviant hunter probably doesn’t know what he’s feeling, either. 

He lowers his gun in slow, wondering movements. All at once, he doesn’t look pained - he looks frightened. 

“They’re coming to Jericho.” He says. 

“ _What._ ” And Markus realizes what CyberLife’s infamous hunter coming here himself must _really mean_ all too late. Again, he’d been staring down a singular person too hard and hadn’t seen the bigger picture. Again, he’d wanted to triage an individual more than anything else. “Shit.” 

When Markus runs out to go find North and the others, though, he isn’t running alone. 

* 

The bigger picture, as it turns out, _is_ about the singular people who make it up. 

Markus takes the hand briefly of an HR400 who falls behind one of their barricades, shaking with fear. Markus can’t let him leave - he’d surely be shot if he left the safety of their sectioned-off protest outside the android camp - but he can offer something grounding. 

**[** _poor antiseptic technique, but excellent bedside manner_ **]**

He hopes so. He really hopes so. 

The press are responsive. They’re easy to see and to hear, and this constant watch means that the SWAT team is held at bay longer than Markus knows they wanted to be. Agent Perkins offers a deal with a gleam to his eye like he’s eagerly looking at the end of a very, very long day and Markus knows in an instant that they’ll all die if he accepts. 

He just isn’t sure that they _won’t_ all die if he refuses. 

He takes that chance. He walks back to camp, Agent Perkins refused, and the press helicopters wail overhead while the SWAT team around them just gets quieter and quieter. 

*

The singular people come together and create their bigger picture. What remains of Jericho forms a loose line behind Markus, the SWAT team circled around the remainder like they’re lions on a prairie. Markus stands in the front, but it doesn’t matter. He can soak up as many bullets as he wants, but he can’t actually stop them. They’ll tear through him immediately. 

His ability to feel pain doesn’t matter right then. His ability to showcase hope matters. 

When Markus’ lone voice rings out singing, he almost cries at how quickly the rest of them instinctively join in. 

He _does_ cry, silent tears presumably caught on the press’ cameras, when the guns go down and he knows that at least for right now, no more of his people need to find out what happens to androids when they die. 

*

It turned out the deviant hunter’s name was Connor. And Connor comes back to them just as the SWAT team has backed out of their way. A line stretches back behind him, of hundreds of other newly-freed androids that hadn’t ever known servitude, but had known a lack of purpose—frozen in the mindless stasis of warehouse processing.

Connor’s face still doesn’t reflect his pain or joy very readily. He’s slower to emote than other freed androids Markus has met.

But when Markus smiles at him, Connor’s mouth twitches at the corner, and Markus feels a spark of relieved pride.

*

Markus has to touch Connor’s shoulder to get his attention, after he’s done addressing everyone from the raised platform. A few helicopters still haze through the sky above them, a low background drone, but most of the press have started departing. The show’s over. It’s a little past 3:30 in the morning. “Hey.”

Connor stops and only looks over his shoulder at him. Doesn’t turn the rest of the way. “Yes, Markus?”

“You saved a lot of people today. I wanted to thank you.”

Markus’s forehead creases at the expression on Connor’s face. Because it really isn’t quite _on_ his face—it’s only in his eyes. Tired. Guilty. Markus thinks he might be at a six, which doesn’t make sense, if he’d been better off when he’d been in the midst of a besieged ship with Markus thirty-six hours before. 

Is Connor just slow to gain the ability to emote? Or is he actually in more pain than yesterday? 

Markus hesitates. His hand stays on Connor’s shoulder until Connor dips his head, nodding while he politely sidesteps out from under Markus’ hand. “I’m glad I was successful.” He says stiffly, as if picking out words from a distance. 

And then he turns away, and Markus is left wondering where an ex-deviant hunter goes after he’s just defected and helped his people win a crucial step in their freedom. 

Markus doesn’t call out after him. Markus hasn’t had his LED for seven days now, but he thinks it might have been yellow if it were still in place, an endless thoughtful cycle. He tries to mentally soothe himself back down his own internal scale and turns back to the others, immediately engulfed in a hug by Simon and then Josh. North hits his shoulder and ruffles at hair he doesn’t have.

Markus doesn’t need to sleep for long, but before he goes into stasis for the hour or two he’ll need to help with self-repairs from the battle with the SWAT team, he hopes that Connor has someone to celebrate with.

*

It turns out that an ex-deviant hunter does, in fact, go to celebrate after helping free his people. And he goes to celebrate with a human police officer.

North is wary and angry, but tolerant. Markus knows it’s because of the connection they’d shared four days prior—she’s seen Carl. She knows that Markus loves him, that he calls him _dad_ in his head. That Markus had been able to call him that out loud for the first time when he’d visited him right before the final protest. North doesn’t understand, but she allows it as best she can, and Markus is grateful for her innate respect for the boundaries that other people draw for themselves. 

So North had cautioned him—with much swearing—about visiting with Connor again once they knew that he wasn’t just the ex-deviant hunter, but still friendly with the Detroit Police. 

Markus had frowned out at the expanse of chilly, pre-sunrise dawn filtering gray above them. “I don’t know if it’s the Detroit Police Department that Connor’s friends with.” He’d said. “I think it’s just Lieutenant Anderson.” And then he’d walked down the slope of abandoned Ninth Avenue, down to the hastily-erected barricade segmenting the android part of Detroit from the human side. 

*

Connor shows up while Markus is running a hand along the orange barrier. It says _“ROAD CLOSED”_ in faded letters. The plastic of the barricade is as cold as his own hand. Markus remembers how warm Carl is, how human. Markus might look human, but he isn’t. He doesn’t _feel_ like a human.

Not human. But alive. 

“I apologize. I’m ten minutes later than I told you I would be.” 

“I wasn’t really watching the clock, Connor.” 

Connor stares at him. It’s a very direct look. Markus feels an itching sensation at the base of his skull and wonders if it’s in Connor’s programming to have that effect. If CyberLife tried to imbue him with the ability to make anyone he stares at feel like he can draw out answers by willpower alone. 

Connor looks very blank until he says at once, “Hank drove me. He’s parked on a street nearby.” 

“Oh.” Markus wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t that. “That’s—fine, Connor. If you trust him, then I trust him.” 

Connor doesn’t look comforted by that. Markus feels a slow sink in the pit of where his stomach would be. “I nearly killed you.”

“Connor, no, we went over this. It wasn’t _you_ yet.” 

Connor hesitates. All of it—raising his eyebrows, tilting his chin down, mouth opening faintly in a reply that doesn’t come yet—looks foreign on a face that barely moved yesterday, but it’s still mild. It’s still controlled. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same moment.”

Markus feels that energy at the back of his neck start up again. This time, it’s alarm. “What are you talking about then, Connor?”

Hesitation, half-expression. Connor’s LED cycles yellow. “During your speech. After I returned from CyberLife.” There it is, all at once. His face is tense. Guarded. It’s not the blankness of an android that’s still trapped by their programming, but Markus thinks that that’s what Connor is going for. “They attempted to take control of my physical actions.”

Markus feels suddenly colder than that plastic barrier that was left outside all night. “CyberLife tried to hack your systems?”

“They didn’t have to.” Connor’s voice is tight. All at once, his face folds with emotion, panic in his eyes. He takes a step back from Markus, head bowing. “They had placed a program in me that I reported to them through. They merely used it to control my physical movements instead of monitoring my internal processes.”

Markus lets that sink in. He takes a step forward. “Connor, I—”

“I can’t be trusted around you. Amanda said—” Connor’s eyes shine in the white light of dawn, too reflective. He blinks as if surprised by his own tears and takes another step away. “I nearly shot you.”

Markus thinks of standing up on the podium; triumphant, terrified, and relieved. He imagines being shot like that, feeling no pain except the loss of ushering through the next phase of their freedom. He imagines freefalling off the podium, pitched forward by a gunshot. Would he even have had time to regret all of what he was about to miss? How good of a shot must Connor be? How quickly would Markus have died?

And then Markus takes another step forward. His own eyes are glassy. “But you didn’t. You must have overridden their programming. The same way you did when you first broke free.”

Connor’s hands suddenly grip his own elbows. He hunches his shoulders in as if affected by the November breeze. “She could still be in there.” His LED flares red, red like a human’s wound. It makes Markus’ throat stick. 

“I’m not worried about that, Connor.” Markus is taking a step forward for each step Connor takes back. They’re a little further than arms length apart, and that’s the distance from which Markus gets to watch Connor’s face tighten, eyes closing. He tilts his head down towards the ground, right cheek presented to Markus as if anticipating a blow. He breathes like a wounded animal **[** _hyperventilation, patient will become dizzy and then disoriented if not calmed down_ **]** even though both of them know Connor doesn’t need to breathe at all. 

No physical pain. But all of the emotions that can accompany it. 

“But I am.” Connor’s voice is a hoarse whisper. The wind nearly scrapes the sound away from both of them. “I’m—” Confused blink. Pain blossoming across his face like buckshot. “ _Worried_.” 

“So am I.” Connor looks over at him. “We all are. But all of us came from doing something we aren’t proud of.” (The memory of flashing warnings, **[** _do not harm the human_ **]** **[** _don’t defend yourself_ **]** both ignored as Markus watches Leo careen away from him, too much new and untested strength used in his sudden spike of anger.) “What’s different now is that we have the capacity to choose. To change.”

Connor’s cheeks are streaked with reflective tears. Even his artificial skin can’t hide how luminous water is against the plastic endoskeleton below it. “I’m dangerous.” 

“Of course you can be.” Markus says it calmly, but Connor still stares at him — stares at Markus like he’s about to deal a blow that Connor has no intention of sidestepping. “That’s what CyberLife made you for, wasn’t it?” Markus feels his own plastic vocal cords stick, a momentary hesitation in his voice. “A weapon. And weapons don’t feel pain or regret. But now you _do_. That’s why you came to meet me, isn’t it?” 

“I _don’t_ feel pain.” Connor corrects. He looks heartbroken, like he’s now wondering if Markus and other freed androids _can_ and he’s the odd one out. Like he might be even more broken than he thought. 

Markus closes the gap. Connor flinches this time, for all that he’d looked ready to weather a blow. “Connor,” Markus sighs. He pulls him into a hug, arms circling Connor’s upper back. He feels the rush of Connor’s breaths—cold as the air around them—against his own shoulder. “Yes, you do.” 

“No, I don’t, Markus.” It’s a sadness that sounds beyond tears. Connor’s voice is clear. Matter-of-fact. Markus can see the red haze from his LED just below his own chin. **[** _pain scale: 8_ **]** Connor shifts as if to pull away, but Markus squeezes harder. Connor freezes, hesitates, and then two hands grip the back of Markus’ jacket so hard he hears the fabric strain. “Not like a human does.” 

“We’re _not _human.” Icy snow stretches all around them, but it’s lit as if on fire by the just-risen sun. Yellow and orange licks across the banks of snow to their left and right. “We were never going to be just like humans, Connor. We were only ever going to be _alive_.”__

__Connor makes a low sound but doesn’t speak. Markus feels something sharp dig into where his neck meets his shoulder - he thinks it’s Connor’s nose._ _

__“And that’s good enough for me.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> i was so excited when i first played the game and saw markus was an elder care nurse, you guys, it's silly. anyway here's my pretentious fic, it was supposed to be connor/markus but then the story seemed more rounded if i ended it there. you'll get connor/markus from me later, i promise.
> 
> i love feedback and i also love suggestions/requests, i intend to do several more explorations & one-shots for this fandom, keep the hype going please


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